Tuesday 8th August and Wednesday 9th August

We left Cairns to embark on our greyhound bus journey down the east coast. The first bus ride was to take us to Mission beach our first port of call.

The journey took around two hours and was a pleasant trip through little towns including Babinda and Innisfail. This area of Queensland is mainly agricultural with the main crops been sugar cane and bananas. It was nice to see that these places are getting back on their feet after the devastating effect of cyclone Larry in March.

We got off the bus and using our trusty Lonely Planet guide headed off to find our motel. It didn’t take us long to realise that the bus stop was not actually in mission beach but in wongaling. Never mind we thought it didn’t look far on the lonely planet map, so we decided to walk along wongaling beach, which then becomes mission beach. Well to cut a long story short it took us an hour and a half to walk in the heat, with backpacks along the beach and through a shallow creek! When we arrived we must have looked like a couple of nutters with bright red faces!

Our motel was called the rainforest motel and was set in among rainforest (surprise, surprise). Mission beach is a quiet and relaxing place with a great beach. We basically spent our time here sun baking (as the aussies call it), reading, eating and drinking winey.

Luckily the lady at the motel was extremely kind and gave us a free lift to the bus stop. As we drove there we were both astonished at the distance that we had walked- approximately six kilometres ( who needs the gym when you are a back packer!!)